Could we not have flown a plane over there or something? Is that, you know, I, this sounds like a dumb question, but presumably we have satellites, and we can zoom in k-

The BBC did do a piece where they were flying a plane, and they were looking at an unco- an uncontacted tribe from miles away, and they said, "We're being very careful not to disturb them," but there is a tribe in the rainforest that has no contact with the outside world.

And you could see these people bending, and they're looking at the plane, but the plane's not close enough to really scare them or to cause them any distress.

And so we have done that.

But then on our river, out in the middle of nowhere where no one's heard of the BBC, you just hear stories from loggers who've come downriver from three weeks upriver.

You can go for three weeks up the river and hit nothing.

There's nothing human.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And we get to decide that.

And so the first time that I saw... my jungle that I'd come to love with my monkeys and my jaguar, these animals that I've come to love and see as almost like neighbors.

You wake up in the morning, you're like, oh, the macaws are out.

There's the spider monkeys and you wave to them and they pee at you and stuff.

It's like you have a relationship with them.

And the first time you see jungle just leveled and the old trees that you walked under are smoking on the ground.

He's

Yeah.

You can't do that.

Um, it was really funny.

We were planning a gala as a fundraising event in New York City, and, uh, it was funny 'cause the planner, great, great human being, p- put on an amazing event, but he goes, "You know, is there any way that we can get one of th- one of those uncontacted tribe to, to come here and represent?" I was like, you r- I was like, "It's really hard to explain," but when you see the pictures of these people that I have in the book, um, or some of the footage that we've, we've shared of them, they're so wild.

They're naked.

They have their penises tied up with string.

It's really the only thing they wear.

Yeah

Mm-hmm.

Um, and so I was having this conversation with my friend Stefan, where he was saying, he goes, you know, "The things you do," he goes, "they're just so reckless at times that they make no sense.

Like, you just have this insanity gene." And I go, "But, you know..." I say, I'm like, "I should've been able to make it up that cliff." And you know, when I climb the tree, I do it with ropes.

And I started on small snakes and non-venomous snakes, and worked my way up to anacondas.

And you know, with all of this stuff, I didn't go out on 10-day solos right away.

I worked up to it.

And so you can do these things safely, and I think that my analogy is that it's just like driving.

Do you always have to be in this overdrive to feel human?

Like, like who-

Gold mining mafias.

They, there's mafias of gold miners.

So actually, some of the security people that I work with with the police have worked for... 'Cause they don't...

You know, security doesn't care where they work for.

They've worked for legal miners.

There are some legal mining happening, not illegal mining, and this dude was telling me a story where he was working for the legal miners.

They burnt it down, the stream.

So can you talk about when you first get there, the connection that you start to have with JJ, with the drinking of the river water, and finding the, the snakes, and you just were inseparable.

Yeah, so that's, that's the thing.

So the first thing that you, that you referenced, the, the, this is important, is like one of the things I've learned on expeditions and in life is that these things that we think are negative, when you go, "Oh, you know, how come I didn't get this job?" Or, or, "How come this is taking me so long?" Or, it's, a lot of times it's life guiding you from what you think you want to what you actually need.

And for me, certainly, like I hated- First grade through 10th grade, I was miserable from September to June every year.

I couldn't-- I don't like the winter.

I like leaves all around me.

I like green.

Yeah.

Tell me about the Nomole.

The, the-- Those guys, um, have been living out in the middle of the Amazon for at least a few hundred years.

They are the uncontacted tribes of lore.

And, you know, here's again one of those things where when I went down there, you would hear by the campfires these stories that deep, deep, deep out in the jungle there are these people that are completely naked, that have no idea that they live in a country called Peru or Brazil.

They've never heard of these things.

They've never...

In, in our region, there's no rocks.

What is the origin story of Paul that led you to becoming, you know, this activist and this very hopeful but ardent, uh, uh, conservationist so devoted to protecting and preserving this part of the world?

Okay.

In my defense, there was a, it was a stream, right? And so the banks of this stream, it was like the jungle, the jungle, the jungle, and then it went about 12 feet down stream, and then it went about 12 feet up, and then there was like a field with beautiful trees.

And there was a m- mother elephant and some, some younger ones all around there, and I was like, "This is beautiful.

I'm gonna keep my distance." And I announced myself.

I said, "Hey, everybody." They all looked over and said, "We don't care." They were like, "It's a person.

Whatever." And they're eating over on the other side of the stream, and I had my notebook, and I like to journal and sketch.

And I said, "All right, I'm gonna just...

What a day.

Like talk about, talk about like dealing with loneliness and dealing with like just being away and like how that's impacted you, if

at all.

You know, when I first went down, I was 18 years old and I wanted adventure so bad that I was going out on solo expeditions.

I was doing like into the wild, you know, for 10 days at a time, just living out in the middle of the jungle, which is absolutely suicidal.

That is insane.

It's like the people that jump from building to building, doing the parkour stuff.

It's just like, dude, you can do it, but there's a high chance that you're going to die.

You didn't like the traditional school route and that kind of led you to do what you're doing now.

Yeah

... were not just degraded, they were annihilated, and that's what we're seeing in the Amazon is that we lu- are losing acreage of this incredibly pristine habitat, and once you lose it, it doesn't grow back.

Okay.

And so we got called by a, a normal indigenous community, who we interact with, who we hire as rangers, and they said, "The tribes are coming out." Now, these people have been on the, on the periphery of myth for years and years.

Are you a fan of plan B's?

I think-- I actually think that I'm not the example to follow because I went so...

My, I had-- I burned the boats.

I had no plan B, and, and, and now, as I'm sitting across the table from you, it's very easy.

I remember being younger and hearing these people, and you listen to a successful business person go, "You know, if I could do it, then anyone could do it.

If it could happen to me, then..." Shut up! You already made it.

Like, and it's like, if you, if you read the pages of that book and how many times I almost died, had infections, almost fell off of cliffs, got bitten by animals, also the, the internal struggle of then being thirty-two.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

And so that was a very-... very in front of that, I mean, at the time, it was tra-- you can only see the tragedy of it at the time.

Mm.

Right? At the time, you know, six months after that, I was just devastated.

I didn't know what happened.

It's like a car crash.

You go, "Wait, wait, hold on.

Yeah, you're out of focus.

Oh.

He was like, "It's just sh- destroyed." And it was...

Where he is, is like something, it's like Cormac McCarthy's nightmare.

If Cormac McCarthy was still alive, I would show him the, the, the...

I went to a part of the Amazon that, that really no one goes to, up this horrible river, and, and the- there were recently contacted, uncontacted people, just, just this tribe that had just come out of the forest, and they still had their bows, and they had no idea...

Me and JJ went for, like, a three-week expedition, plane to plane to plane, to three days on a boat, to two days on a boat, to finally reaching this last settlement, and the missionaries had pulled this tribe out of the forest.

They'd tricked them.

And how many narco organizations, artisanal narco organizations, are out there?

Um, maybe can you speak to, uh, the impact that she's had?

I mean, when I grew up, you know, my parents-- being dyslexic, I couldn't read for a very long time, and so my parents read to us every night, which was amazing, considering how hard they were working.

But they'd find the time to give us, you know, an hour of reading every night, whether it was Lord of the Rings or Sherlock Holmes or Jane Goodall.

And so I grew up with Jane being this figurehead of conservation and of adventure, and sort of a living historical figure, this legendary person.

And so then one time, right around the time that I'd been going to the jungle for a few years, I got to go see Jane speak, I think it was at NYU.

And, you know, sitting in the crowd, watched her, completely amazed, and I had-- at the time, my cousins had been telling me that I should write down my stories, of stories of taking care of an anteater and stories of catching anacondas, and they're like: "Write! You know, this, these are such good stories." And so I'd been writing them down, and I just remember after the talk, you know, she, she did it at, you know, at least an hour on stage, and then thousands of people lined up.

At least hundreds of people lined up, and she sat there, and each of those per- people wants a moment with this legend.

Mm.